The effect of brick-and-mortar and online factors o n the formation of citation and reply ties is studied using an unique data set that compiles blog ging activity within a global IT services firm for over a year and a half. We found that online ti es over the blog network are not limited by the brick-and-mortar ties. Rather, they behave as a coh esive, persistent, and independent group. Further examination of online ties reveals interest ing interaction among different types of ties. We observe the transformation of reply-together tie s into direct reply ties over time. This illustrates the effect of lateral communication in the blogs. We observe a very interesting negative effect of citations ties on future reply t ies suggesting that certain pairs of actors might be substituting one type of tie for the other. We a lso find positive effect of the reciprocal and simmelian conditions as predicted by prior work in social sciences. However, having multiclique simmelian ties between a pair of individuals ha a negative effect on their future interaction. The insights from these findings are d iscussed in the light of the characteristic of different ties. 1 This is a student authored paper.
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